Lactose-Free Cheese Sauce
Potato and carrot combine with nutritional yeast to create a sauce that stretches and melts, completely without cheese.
- Preparation
- 10 min
- Cook/bake time
- 20 min
- Total
- 30 min
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Calories
Potato and carrot combine with nutritional yeast to create a sauce that stretches and melts, completely without cheese. The trick is the potato starch. When freshly pureed, it becomes sticky and stringy, which is exactly what you expect from melted cheese. Add nutritional yeast for a savory base note and mustard for acidity.
Why this works
Cheese stretches because its milk protein forms long chains when melted. Potato starch can do something similar. When boiled potatoes are processed in a blender, the starch cells tear open and release long amylopectin chains. This is the exact same reaction that ruins mashed potatoes, but here it is highly desirable. That is why this sauce is blended and not mashed. The flavor comes from two other building blocks. Nutritional yeast contains a lot of free glutamic acid and nucleotides, providing the savory base note associated with cheese. Mustard provides the acidity that cheese gets from lactic acid fermentation. Without the acidity, the sauce tastes like vegetable puree, but with it, it comes surprisingly close to the original.
Step-by-step instructions
- 1
Boil the vegetables until soft
Boil the potatoes, carrots, and onion in a little salted water for fifteen minutes until everything is very soft. Soft really means soft here, as any piece that still has resistance will remain as a little grain in the sauce later.
- 2
Reserve the cooking water
Drain the vegetables and catch 250 ml of the cooking water. It already contains dissolved starch, which helps to thicken the sauce. Using fresh water here would be a wasted opportunity.
- 3
Blend until stringy
Put everything into the blender with 200 ml of the cooking water and blend for a full minute on the highest setting. The mixture will become visibly viscous and start to form strings. This is the torn potato starch, and for this sauce, that is exactly the goal.
- 4
Season and heat
Season to taste with salt, lemon, and mustard, then heat the sauce over low heat. Bring it to the desired consistency with the remaining cooking water. It thickens significantly as it cools and becomes almost solid in the fridge.
Our best tips
- Blend, do not mash. The torn potato starch is explicitly desired here, as it replaces the strings of melted cheese.
